I read a new thing about the Italian system yesterday. They have a constitutional backup for when an election goes wrong, such as this one, and leaves them with little reaslistic chance of a coalition forming. The numbers are wrong - without some very strange bedfellows. Re-running the election is expected to yield the same result. In Germany they re-formed the grand coalition for the same reason.
But in Italy they have another option. The termporary government. Often lead by technocrats it's there to keep the lights on, pass a budget through Parliament and do as little else as possible. But it's often expected to one other job, pass a new electoral law in order to come up with a new voting system that hopefully will give a different result at the next election so they can actually form a political government.
Of course the last government lost its PM (Renzi) and its popularity holding a referendum on chaning the electoral system. After it had already abolished the previous one - so they couldn't resign and hold an election as there was no law in place to run it under. It took 18 months to agree.
I think the Italians may have changed their electoral system in the last 20 years as many times as the UK has held elections...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
